I am to thankful to all of the beautiful people who took the time to respond to my roundup.

I have asked a question to a part of my favourite camping and outdoors bloggers and experts and I was pleasantly surprised to get such a good feedback.

My thinking was to create a resource were people searching for a specific air mattress will find the answers given from people that have hands-on experience and could offer insight that one gets only through experience.

Some of the people answered with full descriptions, others offered their quick reply and a part did not answer at all.

I can only thank them all and hope that in the future we will create more resources of this type because I can only see benefits of such an endeavour.

To the people that are getting their answers here I can say only this: take your time to digest all of the information here, and if you did not find a complete answer you can always contact me and I will do my best to offer as much help as I can, and also I have included the links to the Twitter & Facebook accounts for each of the camping experts below so that you can easily reach out to them and connect or share your thoughts.

Table with the air mattresses that the outdoors experts recommend:

Picture

Model

Reviewed by

My Overall Quality Rating

See Amazon Offer

Therm-a-Rest ProLite Sleeping Pad

Chris from "The Last Adventurer"

5 / 5

Therm-a-Rest ProLite Plus

Emily from "Dirty Gourmet"

4.9 / 5

Big Agnes Q-Core Sleeping Pad

Emily from "Dirty Gourmet" & Stephen Berei from "Granite Rocx"

4.7 / 5

Therm-A-Rest Trail Lite

Meghan J. Ward
from "The Campsite"

4.8 / 5

BIG AGNES Insulated Q-Core SL Mummy

Craig & Kathy Copeland
from "Hiking Camping"

4.9 / 5

Therm-a-rest NeoAir All Season

Katie Levy
from Adventure inspired" & The Outdoorplay Team
from "Outdoor Play"

“What is the best air mattress for a perfect camping trip and why?”

Twitter & Facebook
When it comes to the airbed for the perfect camping trip, I’d have to admit to not having sampled that great a variety of airbeds so far.

However saying that I can definitely give some good advice!

As with most things you definitely get what you pay for, I had several very cheap and poorly made airbeds that leaked terribly, It was then that I took the plunge and spent a bit more on a higher quality bed and have never looked back. Buy cheap and buy twice!

You also need to think about a pump. A useless pump is infinitely far more frustrating than an airbed that you need to top up half way through your camping trip. I’ve had pumps that were so shoddy that it made it literally quicker to blow up the bed with a bit of old fashioned huffing and puffing – that definitely isn’t the perfect camping trip.

I use a double airbed in the back of my VW T4 all the time and have a fantastic little electric pump that simply plugs into the cigarette lighter. You just sit back and watch it fill up – awesome!

Hopefully during the summer I will try out a selection of airbeds and get an opinion in terms of my favourite branded airbed.

Twitter & Facebook
This is a difficult question to answer, because there are many different types of campers who are looking for different features in a mattress.

Mattress features to consider while camping:

Warmth, insulation from the ground, above all else

Comfort

Weight

Compressibility

Space

You use a mix of your body heat and insulation to heat up the air mattress, which will keep you warm while camping.

This means that the big, thick, luxurious air mattresses are not generally ideal for any type of camping, because they have too much air to heat up during the night. They also take up way too much space and weight, whether in your car or in your backpack.
An insulated air mattress around 2-4 inches thick is ideal for any camping situation that you won’t be required to carry your mattress on your back. My favorite is the REI Camp Bed 3.5.

If I were going to choose one air mattress that would be sufficient and versatile in almost any situation, I would choose the Therm-a-rest Prolite Plus sleeping pad.

A great superlight air mattress that would be ideal for backpacking when you are focused on decreasing weight and space while still keeping warm is the Big Agnes Insulated Q Core SL Pad.

It has to be versatile: reasonably light and compact for backpacking, yet sufficiently thick, long, and comfortable for car camping.

And it has to be insulated, so it keeps you warm regardless how cold the ground — without wearing extra layers of clothing, or the addition of a closed-cell foam pad, or the need for a heavier sleeping bag.

Plus it should be durable.

Even with a patch kit, a deflated mattress can ruin your night, or even your trip. We nominate the Big Agnes Insulated Air Core Mummy.

We’ve been using ours for several years — car camping and backpacking — and we’d buy them again.

In terms of mattresses for family camping – we only recommend self inflating mats (ie. mats that require no additional accessories, like pumps, to inflate).

Our information on self inflating is here: We have tried air mattresses in the past, and have found them not to be suitable for camping in a tent – if the ground is cold, then the air mattress becomes like a block of ice to sleep on.

To avoid this, plenty of insulation would be needed under the mattress and that means taking more gear.

Plus the thought of a leak or puncture on air mattresses isn’t something I want to contend with during the night.

For size, ease of use and packing up and storage, we find self inflating mats to be the mattress of choice for us.

We reckon the Insta-Bed with pump is the go. We have a small inverter that plugs into the cigarette lighter socket and pumps it up in no time. Since we’ve had the air bed, our friends call our tent ‘The Palace’! Cheers and Happy Camping

Now it’s your turn. Please use the comment section below telling us what pad or air mattress do you usually take in your camping trips and why. Also please feel free to make any comment on this roundup on just leave your thoughts on it. Sleep tight !

Three things you need to know about James - he holds a degree in Materials Technology from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, he is a zealot for the great outdoors and he can never find his glasses.
In brief intermissions between looking for his glasses, he is the Editor-in-chief of BestAirMattressGuide.com.

2 thoughts on “Camping Experts Roundup – What is the best air mattress for a perfect camping trip?”

I’m currently using an Exped SynMat UL Basic on an around the world cycling and it’s absurdly comfortable (as well as only weighing about 450g). I combine it with a super thin 2mm, 85g foam roll mat for protection/diversity.